Institute

Founded in 1994, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) in Berlin is one of the more than 80 research institutes administered by the Max Planck Society. It is dedicated to the study of the history of science and aims to understand scientific thinking and practice as historical phenomena.

People

The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science comprises scholars across all Departments and Research Groups, as well as an Administration team, IT Support, Research IT Group, and Research Coordination and Communications team.

Publications & Resources

The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) engages with the research community and broader public, and is committed to open access.

This section provides access to published research results and electronic sources in the history of science. It is also a platform for sharing ongoing research projects that develop digital tools.

Researchers at the Institute benefit from an internal library service. The Institute’s research is also made accessible to the wider public through edited Feature Stories and the Mediathek’s audio and video content.

News & Events

The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science frequently shares news, including calls for papers and career opportunities. The Media & Press section highlights press releases and the Institute's appearances in national and global media. Public events—including colloquia, seminars, and workshops—are shown on the events overview.

Rivka Feldhay

Visiting Scholar (Jun 2018-Oct 2018)

Born in Israel in 1947, I served in the Israeli Army (1965–1967), and then studied history and English language and literature at the Hebrew University. I started my training in History of Science with Yehuda Elkana and wrote my MA thesis and PhD thesis with him, both were awarded summa cum laude. In 1984 I started teaching at the Cohn Institute for History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas at Tel Aviv University, where I was promoted to full professorship and served as the head of the institute for six years (1997–2003). My research and teaching areas include knowledge, religion, and politics in the early modern period; intellectual currents in the Renaissance; Copernicus and Galileo in context; science education in Catholic Europe; Baroque culture and the New Science. I have been a fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center (1987–1988), the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin (1998–1999), the International Research Center for Cultural Studies in Vienna (1994), the Dibner Institute at MIT (1995), the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin (1997; 2005–2006), and the Collegium Helveticum of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH) (2001). Since 2009 I am Director of Minerva Humanities Center in Tel Aviv University, leading the research group on “migrating knowledge.”

Feldhay, R. (2015). The global and the local in the study of the humanities. In T. M. Arabatzis, J. Renn, & A. Simões (Eds.), Relocating the history of science: essays in honor of Kostas Gavroglu (pp. 253-267). Dordrecht: Springer.